Death Comes To My Old Economics Department

That would be the one at my alma mater, the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  I have learned that on July 6 one of its current members died, Bill Sandholm, an excellent evolutionary game theorist who was about 50 years old.  It is a sign of my age that he always seemed quite young to me, barely older than my oldest daughter, and now he is dead.  He was a very nice guy, aside from being a very capable economist who was the Richard Stockwell Professor of Economics and once helped me out with a paper that was in a Revise and Resubmit condition.

I bring this up because there is an unconfirmed rumor that he died of complications of Covid-19, with for the moment nobody that I know, including members of the department, knowing what he died of.  If the rumor is correct, he will be the first person I knew personally to die of this dreadful pandemic.  It does bring it rather home.

It also does so because it probably puts the final nail into any plan to visit Madison this summer, which I have done almost every summer if for no other reason than having family members there I wish to see, not to mention some friends still, and it being a very pleasant place to visit in the summer, cooler than Virginia where i live. Indeed, Plan A had been to be there last weekend, but that got put off due to the pandemic.  I had still thought of possibly going maybe at the beginning of August or thereabouts for a quick pop-in.  But now apparently there has been a new spike of cases there and in Wisconsin more broadly, something my daughter who lives there had informed us of just in the last couple of days accompanied by discouraging noises about trying to go there.  And now I have learned about this new development, although it may be that the rumor is false.  But it does seem to be a final hammer hit on any plans to visit that fair city I am so much attached to for now.

Barkley Rosser